THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 9, 2017
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ringtone that briefly intruded upon
the proceedings.
Jim DeMint, the former senator
from South Carolina, is the president
of the foundation, and he was jubilant.
DeMint's current job, like his old one,
requires a degree of ideological flexi-
bility, and he had forged a close rela-
tionship with Trump. In March, Her-
itage published a list of eight worthy
nominees for the Supreme Court; when
Trump released his own list, in May, it
included five judges from the Heritage
slate. Addressing the audience, DeMint
looked like a man who had won a long-
shot bet. "What just happened, in this
election, may have preserved our con-
stitutional republic," he said.
Some of the people onstage weren't
so sure. One of them was Goldberg,
who had had an eventful year: his
response to Decius was only one in
a series of acerbic essays that had
established him as a leading light of
the #NeverTrump movement, a group
of normally reliable partisans who said
they could imagine voting for just about
any Republican candidate---except
one. This was in some sense a protest
movement, albeit one led by a polit-
ical élite. Its ranks included both
National Review and its chief rival, The
Weekly Standard, as well as most of the
leading conservative newspaper col-
umnists, countless scholars and policy
wonks, and, quite possibly, the two Pres-
idents Bush, both of whom declined
to endorse Trump. Goldberg once called
Trumpism "a radiation leak threaten-
ing to destroy the G.O.P." and com-
pared the candidate to "a cat trained
to piss in a human toilet." ("It's amaz-
ing! It's remarkable!" he wrote, mock-
ing those impressed by Trump's oc-
casional displays of political poise.
"Yes, yes, it is: for a cat.") At the Her-
itage event, though, Goldberg tried
to be magnanimous in defeat. "I am
entirely open to giving Donald Trump
the benefit of the doubt," he said.
"The #NeverTrump thing is over---by
definition."
Sitting next to him was John Yoo,
who was a prominent Department of
Justice o cial under President George W.
Bush, and who had recently likened
Trump to Mussolini. Glancing mischie-
vously at Goldberg, Yoo said, "I don't
know if it's over for him, though."
"That's true," Goldberg replied,
chuckling. "Tell my wife I love her, if
I suddenly disappear."
The speakers at Heritage that day
di ered in the degree of optimism they
allowed themselves. All of them believed
that Trump would likely nominate a
suitably conservative judge to fill An-
tonin Scalia's seat on the Supreme Court.
But when the host asked whether Trump
might be "more sensitive and self-
restrained" than Obama in the use of
executive power, the room erupted in
laughter. Yoo didn't dismiss the idea. He
imagined Trump, on the first day of his
term, repealing all of Obama's executive
orders and agency regulations---an im-
perious way to make the Presidency less
imperial. Goldberg, by contrast, insisted
that, despite Trump's declarations of par-
tisan fealty, he was at heart "a lifelong
Democrat from New York who likes to
cut deals." He argued that conservatives
should make it their mission to keep
President Trump in line---to insure that
"he has to deal with us and get our ap-
proval on the important things."
But why should Trump now heed a
political movement that was unable to
stop him? In May, he told George Steph-
anopoulos, "Don't forget, this is called
the Republican Party. It's not called the
Conservative Party." During the cam-
paign, Trump declared himself a con-
vert to some conservative causes, like
the pro-life movement, while unapol-
ogetically spurning others: he excori-
ated the "Republican Establishment,"
took a skeptical view of free trade and
free markets, and shrugged at gay mar-
riage and transgender bathroom guide-
lines.Trump's popularity was undimmed
by these transgressions, which led Rush
Limbaugh to suggest, in one memora-
ble broadcast, that "the Republican con-
servative base is not monolithically con-
servative." If liberals were shocked, on
Election Night, to realize that they were
outnumbered (in the swing states, at
least), then many leading conservatives
must have been even more shocked to
discover, throughout the year, that their
movement was no longer theirs---if it
ever had been. We have grown accus-
tomed to hearing stories about the lib-
eral bubble, but the real story of this
year's election was about the conserva-
tive bubble: the results showed how
sharply the priorities of the movement's
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